Zoot Suit
The zoot suit was a style of clothing popularized by young male African Americans, Filipino Americans, and Mexican Americans during the 1930s and 1940s. A zoot suit consisted of very baggy high-waisted pants, pegged around the ankles, worn with a long jacket that came to below the knee. The jacket had high, wide shoulder pads that jetted out from the shoulder, giving the wearer a broad look. A longchain dangled from the belt, and the outfit was trimmed with thick-soled shoes and a wide-brimmed hat. It was the style of very hip cats. It is believed the style was created in the African-American community, and there are several stories as to where it actually originated.
A zoot suit.In the urban jazz culture of Harlem, the word "zoot" meant something exaggerated, either in style, sound, or performance. The style of dress was an extravagant style, out of proportion to the norm, and it later came to be known as the zoot suit, which consisted of "a killer-diller coat with a drape-shape, reat-pleats and shoulders padded like a lunatic's cell." The suit was for having fun, with the baggy pants made for dancing the jitterbug, and the long coat and the wide-brimmed hat giving the wearer a grown-up look. Many famous black entertainers and musicians wore the zoot suit. Duke Ellington performed at the Orpheum Theatre in Los Angeles in 1941 with a musical number called "Jump for Joy," and all his performers wore zoot suits. Cab Calloway wore a zoot suit in the 1943 film Stormy Weather.
One theory of the origins of the zoot suit was that it was imitated from the suit worn by Clark Cable in the movie Gone with the Wind. In fact, some people called them "Gone with the Wind suits." Others say that a big band leader and clothier, Harold C. Fox from Chicago, designed the first zoot suit. He said he copied the fashions of ghetto-dwelling teenagers, and in 1941 made such suits for musicians who wanted an "eye-poppin' style." When Fox died in 1996 at the age of 86, he was buried in a lavender zoot suit. The most believed story is one published in the New York Times in 1943 during the zoot suit riots taking place in Los Angeles, stating that a young African-American busboy from Gainesville, Georgia, placed an order with a tailor for what would be the "first zoot suit on record." Clyde Duncan ordered a suit with a 37-inch-long coat and with pants 26 inches at the knees and 14 inches at the ankle. Once the suit was made, the tailor took his picture and sent it to Men's Apparel Reporter, where the photo was printed.
On the West Coast, the suit came to be identified with young Mexican Americans, known as Pachucos. They were mostly second-generation Mexicans, the sons of working-class immigrants, who settled in Los Angeles. Pachucos created a subculture with a mysterious argot that incorporated archaic Spanish, modern Spanish, and English slang words. They dressed in zoot suits, creating a distinct style that identified them as neither Mexican nor American, but that emphasized their social detachment and isolation. Because there was a war going on, and there was conservation of fabric, wearing the zoot suit was considered an unpatriotic act. In the summer of 1943, while the whole country watched, gangs of sailors and zoot-suiters fought in the streets of Los Angeles. Outraged at the zoot suit style, sailors chased the zoot suiters through the streets and unclothed them. It is unclear if this was a race riot or a riot of patriotism by the sailors who attacked, beat, and stripped young Mexican Americans whom they perceived to be disloyal immigrants.
The zoot suit received wide attention and recognition in the 1970s with the production of the play Zoot Suit, written and produced by Luis Valdez. It was performed in Los Angeles and New York. A film of the play, with the same name, was released in 1981 with performances by actors Daniel Valdez and Edward James Olmos.
In the late 1990s, the zoot suit has had a rebirth with the revival of swing music—with imitations of Cab Calloway, the zoot suit, and the jump dance steps. From Chicago to San Francisco, twenty-somethings were dancing to big bands with names like Mighty Blue Kings, The Big Six, Bag Bad Voodoo Daddy, and Indigo Swing, who played swing music from the 1930s and 1940s. Part of the fun of this music was dancing at the big clubs and wearing the clothes to match.A 1996 article in the Los Angeles Times claimed that fashion designers such as Bill Blass and Ralph Lauren were picking up the zoot suit look in their fall designs, including wide jacket lapels and hip-chains, but not the big shoulders. In 1999, numerous suppliers of zoot suits and swing-style clothing were listed on the Internet.
Further Reading:
Cosgrove, Stuart. "The Zoot Suit and Style Warfare." In Zoot Suits and Second-Hand Dresses: An Anthology of Fashion and Music, edited by Angela McRobbie. London, Macmillan, 1989, 3-22.
Eig, Jonathan. "Swing Kids." Down Beat. Vol. 64, No. 12, December 1997, 56-62.
——. "'Zoot Suit' Fox Dead at Age 86." Down Beat. Vol. 63, No.11, November 1996, 16-18.
Rourke, Mary. "A Suitable Enterprise for the Counterculture: Reflections on the Zoot Suit." Los Angeles Times. Vol. 115, August 5, 1996, E1.
Sanchez, Thomas. Zoot-suit Murders: A Novel. New York, Dutton, 1978.
Tyler, Bruce. "Zoot-Suit Culture and the Black Press." Journal of American Culture. Vol. 17, No. 2, 1994, 21-33.
White, Shane, and Graham White. Stylin': African American Expressive Culture from Its Beginnings to the Zoot Suit. Ithaca, New York, Cornell University Press, 1998.
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